Bayan Muna prods SC to make Sun, Globe, Smart refund excess SMS charges

Leaders of Bayan Muna party-list want the Supreme Court (SC) to issue an order for telecom firms to refund excessive text messaging fees in favor of subscribers.

In a petition filed on Monday, Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate and former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares urged the high court to reverse a Court of Appeals (CA) decision on June 27, 2016 favoring Globe Telecom Inc., Smart Communications Inc., and Digitel Mobile Philippines Inc. (Sun Cellular).

The petitioners said the telcos must shoulder the "commensurate penalty" for every day that the companies refused to heed a National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) order to refund or reimburse all prepaid and postpaid subscribers that were overcharged for sending text messages.

Globe and Smart said they have yet to see a copy of the petition.

"It's still a petition we have not seen. We will respond once we see the reasons and legal arguments," Globe general counsel Froilan Castelo said in text message.

"We are reserving comment until we have more info on this matter," Ramon Isberto, PLDT Inc. and Smart Public Affairs head, said in a separate text message to GMA News Online.

Previously, the telcos questioned before the CA the  NTC order in November 2012 to lower the text message charge of P1 to 80 centavos—an offshoot of a lower interconnection charge for text messages that went down from 35 centavos to 15 centavos under Memorandum Circular (MC) No. 02-10-2011 issued on October 24, 2011.

Ruling on the petition, the appellate court said the reduction in interconnection charges did not necessarily translate to similar drop the rate for short messaging service or SMS and that SMS is a value-added service. As such, text messaging was deregulated rendering as non-existent the conditions for the NTC to exercise its residual power to regulate a value-added service of the telcos.

In arguing for the reversal of the CA ruling, the petitioners said text messaging is not a value-added service and that the telcos' SMS rates is a "necessary consequence" of the reduction of their interconnection charges and not a function of regulation.

"All mobile telecommunications services provide text messaging as a basic and standard service along with voice messaging, available from the start of mobile telephone use. Text messaging is free but is offered for a fee by telecommunications companies," the petition read.

As of end-May 2014, the NTC said that Globe, Smart, Sun Cellular have collected P7.28 billion since the lower interconnection charge was implemented. Instead of charging subscribers P0.15 per text message, the telcos charged consumers P0.35.

It translated to a conservative estimate of P8 million per day that was "illegally exacted and collected" by Globe, Smart and Digitel, the petitioners said.

"The telcos cannot claim for itself money that it has unlawfully collected from its subscribers. Its lawful obligation is to return the amounts immediately to prevent further injustice to its clients, because its act of taking the money of its subscribers is unjust enrichment at the expense of its subscribers," the petition said.

The petitioners said the telcos must be obliged further to pay a 6-percent interest starting December 1, 2011 "until the whole final judgment" in the case has been settled.

"When final judgment is reached, the telcos should be made to pay 12 percent per annum until its obligations are fully paid," they said. — With Ted Cordero/ VDS/ALG, GMA News